Infestation
by death-in-the-orchard
Summary: During Abraham van Hellsing's time - The Vampire Alucard's presence beneath the mansion is drawing in various vermin, leading to something of an infestation, which Abraham of course must take care of.
1. In the Study

Scrunched into the short, and not exactly comfortable, fibers of the Indian rug he kept on the floor of his private study, Abraham van Hellsing lay face-down, squinting into the gap beneath one of his bookshelves. "Nothing. Of course, nothing… I can see _nothing_." Grumbling, he pushed himself up and sat grumpily for a moment, scowling at his bookshelf.

He listened for a sound, a scrape, a squeak.

But he heard nothing.

With his lungs bursting with aggravation, Abraham sighed heatedly as he commenced to do exactly what he had wanted to avoid. He got to his knees and began to remove his knickknacks and the other delightful decorative objects he'd arranged in front of his books on the shelves. He had a tin army that he had painted vibrant, glaring colors when he was a boy of about twelve. Since then, he had touched up the paint and made sure the colors had never faded.

So he was very familiar with his figurines. And he knew when one of his cavalry men, who was fused to a rearing horse, was no longer leading a charge against an array of blue foot soldiers. The rest of the cavalry was bright red, with other minute details, but the missing figurine was bright canary yellow. It was a very pretty yellow, in Abraham's opinion.

Abraham began to pull out the books that had stood behind the battle scene before it had been dismantled. Taking out a large volume, Abraham spotted the thief. With a roll of his eyes and a shake of his head, Abraham sat back on his haunches and glared at the bat that huddled at the back of the shelf with the canary yellow cavalry officer. Sighing once more, he reached for the bat and promptly drew his hand back with grunted complaints in Dutch, as the bat clicked and bared its teeth defensively, clinging to the cavalry officer.

"Why?" Abraham demanded, slapping his thighs and bending down to meet the little beady glower. "What can you do with it? It's not even comfortable. What?" He gestured with disbelief, "What? Do you like the color? You can't even see color. Most likely not," the last he added reluctantly, and was quiet.

The bat's fangs remained bared.

Abraham took a moment to consider the bat and its aims, and the total absence of sense this situation seemed to have. So he extended his hand again in a more open manner, "Please, may I have that back?"

The fanged mouth closed, and the bat calmed and licked its mouth thoughtfully. Blinking, but in no other way changing his manner, Abraham reached for the cavalry officer. The bat watched his hand, but allowed Abraham to take the officer without a fuss.

Abraham sat there staring at the peculiar little beast, the tin cavalry man in his hand. He was charmed for all of half a minute, before he recalled what his true aim had been, what had brought him to the bookshelf in the first place.

He was supposed to be expelling these invasive vermin.

Abraham grunted, his expression sagging with half-hearted annoyance. He went to fetch his sack and gloves from another part of his study, and returned to try and fish the bat out of the shelf. It hissed and clicked and flapped its wings in the most menacing way it could, being such a tiny beast. Eventually Abraham wrangled this miniature beast into his sack and shut it up, after checking inside to make sure the bat had comfortably nestled itself into a cloth that had been placed in the sack for the convenience of its (future) occupants.

Leaving the sack untied, trusting that the bat was comfortable enough to remain inside, Abraham placed the cavalry man with his men on one of the stacks of books that had accumulated all over the floor – it was truly becoming something of a geographical wonder. Abraham had emptied two bookshelves so far, and knew better than to replace the books before all of his unwelcomed vermin were captured. If they were not promptly caught and stuffed into the sack, the bats tended to fly to another bookshelf and crawl behind the books. The curtains were another favorite of theirs – they refused to let go of the curtains, and always left them dirty.

But various instances of 'odd' behavior, such as a bat kidnapping a tin soldier and complying with a verbal request, had led Abraham to suspect that the vermin where not merely drawn to the vampire, or that the vampire was drawing the vermin in deliberately; it seemed like the longer the little beasts stayed in the mansion, close to Alucard, the 'odder' they became.

However, Abraham simply did not have the time needed to study these colonies of little oddities. _No_ , he thought, as he pulled fluffy handfuls of bats from his bookshelves, _no time at all_. He had only just returned home from a business trip, and he had an entire infestation to take care of. Between the vermin, the vampire, and the Organization, he quite literally had his hands full.


	2. In the Cell

_For Schingiuire,_

 _death-in-the-orchard_

* * *

In the dark bowels of the Hellsing Underworld, the decrepit beast lay on the icy floor of his cell. Crimson eyes seared into the impenetrable, black void of the ceiling above him. Spiders of various sizes crawled over the rags he wore, together with beetles and various other insects. The Vampire Alucard could have easily passed for a corpse, if not for the color and intensity that remained in his gaze.

Two rats scurried about the wall beside him, at times chasing one another into a corner, where they would tussle and squeak, and then dart along another wall with various hops and leaping scampers. A multitude of diminutive mousie eyes followed the rats, always keeping the vampire's body between themselves and their predatory roommates as a protective barrier. The mice were silent and rather docile for now; none could eat or play while the towering rats were present.

Thus far, one bat had managed to make its way into the vampire's cell. The little bat hung from an empty bracket on the wall, grooming himself as he puffed and ruffled his fur with what could only be considered vanity or pride. When hungry, the bat would usually fly about the cell until he could make a dive at some unsuspecting moth. There wasn't much sport in the hunt, to be honest, as the air space was very limited, made smaller by the surplus of flittering moths that crowded it; taking flight during night hours when the other tenants were most active. Moths were at the very foundation of the little ecosystem, their populations being maintained by stores of rotting bread and nuts that had been crammed between the bricks in the walls. The smell was hideous, but the vermin liked it. Yes, and they enjoyed the vampire too, probably for a similar reason. Moths perched on the creature, and at times nibbled at his clothes – to diversify their diet.

At the present moment, the bat, who was in a swaggering and reckless mood, saw a particularly fat moth sitting and cleaning its antennae in the vampire's hair. When the bat took flight, circled three times, and dove, the vampire watched it with a languid air. He watched, and continued to watch, and only became aware of the bat's intention once it was too late to stop the silly thing. The bat landed in the great, matted mass of grey hair that was knotted about the vampire's head and trailed in irregular tendrils across the floor.

The tiny beast jerked and twisted until finally erupting into a flurry of mad panic. Alucard, who had already been attempting to coax the bat out of his hair, and had been trying to keep it calm in order to minimize the inconvenience, sat up with exasperated hisses and foreign mutterings when the bat proved itself to be hopelessly entangled. Alucard bent over, shifting the great, grimy mass of his hair over his face and into his lap so that he could fish about for the flailing bat. With all this grappling, the various insects that had taken up residence on the vampire's person, tumbled moodily from his clothes, generally thrown off in the excitement to land either right-side up or upside-down, with skittering legs that either churned at the air or got them safely away.

Although, those who scrambled too far off were snatched up by the rats (it's tough being little). These furry spectators sat on their hind legs, munching various bugs without paying the poor insect in their paws any mind, as they watched Alucard's current predicament with interest.

Meanwhile, the mice had been set off in a tizzy; they dashed and whizzed about in fitful terror, one by one remembering where the nearest hole or crevice in the wall might be found, and squeezing themselves into it. A while later, little eyes and noses, sometimes entire heads, poked out of one hole or another to look on, some furry faces retreating more quickly than others. One mouse climbed over the body of a tarrying onlooker to get a better view, and when he found himself out in the open, was so stricken with horror that he froze, his rigid tail sticking straight up in the air, as though he were planning to become someone's designated flagpole. The fat rats gave the little mouse a casual glance, finished munching on their bugs, and then cleaned their mouths and whiskers, and returned to watching the vampire's amusing spectacle. The panting, most certainly disgraced, bat hung limply for long stretches of time, and then would flap and lunge and gasp, as though it were drowning – which of course, only made things more difficult for Alucard.

But the demon maintained his patience, having little else to do with his time. Alucard slowly unknotted the little bat, sighing now and then, his lips twitching this way and that in various grimaces. When the bat finally slipped through the untangled strands and plopped into the vampire's bony lap, Alucard let out a long sigh and fell immediately back to lie like the dead on the stones. The recovering bat climbed about the lap with evident indignity and chattering threats at those who had witnessed his humiliation, but eventually the bat settled himself on the vampire's empty stomach, being too tired to return to his perch on the wall. He would much rather wait for the vampire to wake up and place him up there, like the vampire usually did.

* * *

 _Side Note: Feel free to chuck ideas at me. The little beasts are planning to get into mischief._


End file.
